


Springtime for Krieger

by coltsbane



Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:03:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coltsbane/pseuds/coltsbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an ISIS employee is killed in the line of duty, there's only one man Malory Archer can turn to to save the day. Sort of. God help us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Springtime for Krieger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [broadcastdelay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/broadcastdelay/gifts).



> Spoilers smattered throughout for all four seasons of Archer.

The first thing Cheryl Tunt saw when she opened her eyes was Pam Poovey munching on a burrito.

Cheryl screamed.

"What?" Pam asked, flecks of refried beans and spittle flying towards Cheryl.

Thankfully for Cheryl, Krieger stepped between them. "Don't startle the subject! I don't yet know her temperament."

Cheryl tried to stand up from her partially reclined position on Krieger's sweet movable specimen table. "Why am I restrained? Ooh is this some kind of sex game?"

"Oh for," Malory came into Cheryl's field of view. "You're restrained, young lady, because our resident mad scientist didn't do all of the testing he should have before turning you on!"

"You said it was imperative she was conscious and functional by the end of the week!" Krieger protested. "It's one or the other."

"You could have done it," Malory replied, eyes rolling in contempt, "if you hadn't been screwing around with all of those 'extra features'."

"Science demands progress! That means adding in a few little extras every time I do this."

"Do what?" Cheryl asked. "Turn me on? Extra features? SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT'S HAPPENING." Everyone in the room winced at her shriek.

"Don't you remember?" Pam asked. "Your brother trying to kill you? Again?"

"No..."

"There are some minor memory issues, but nothing a few weeks of tweaking can't fix," Krieger assured Malory.

"That had better be the case!" She took a sip from her glass. "If she's not 100% Cheryl Tunt by the time December rolls around, what was the point of bringing back the assassinated heiress of the Tunt fortune at all?"

"Uh," Pam raised her hand. "Doing the right thing by an employee killed in the line of duty?"

"She was crossing the road."

Pam scoffed. "To get your dry cleaning!"

"And anyway, assassination isn't covered by the employee health insurance policy. I'm doing this out of the kindness of my own heart."

"And not because you hope she'll be grateful enough to fund ISIS for the next five years in exchange for saving her life. Well, rebuilding it." Krieger stroked his beard. "Reactivating it?"

"Waaaaait." It had taken Cheryl a little while to catch up. Not all of her processors were firing quite right yet. "Turning me on. Extra features. Assassination? Killed in the line of duty? KRIEGER! Did you turn me into a cyborg?"

Cyril and Archer walked in. "Cheryl's a cyborg now?"

"Yeah," Archer replied. "Mother had Krieger steal her body-"

"Retrieve! Exhume! Salvage!" Krieger protested. He was doing a lot of that today, and he was pretty sure when geniuses with questionable ethical standing in the scientist community presented their finest work, it was supposed to be the other way around.

"-whatever," Archer continued, "And resurrect her as a cyborg so her brother Cecil couldn't inherit her half of the family fortune, cutting ISIS off from a potential income stream."

"Sounds like Ms Archer..." Cyril said.

"Hey!" Cheryl again tried to sit up. Her restraints strained under the new superhuman strength she was testing out. "Who said you could turn me into a cyborg?"

"We covered that," Archer said, tipping his glass at his mother.

"The other option was being dead," Malory shrugged. "Pick one."

"I can't believe my jerk brother Cecil tried to kill me again. Ugh!"

"Now that you have the strength of ten brawny men, a titanium-alloy skeleton and no need to sleep or breathe, you could return the favor?" Krieger was always looking on the bright side.

"Yeah!" Pam agreed. "Snap him like a twig!"

"Just...don't go gaga and end up running off to Barry and the KGB like Krieger's last cyborg," Cyril suggested.

"Hey!" Archer glared. "I'm standing right here! That was my fiance you're talking about! I have feelings, you know!"

Cyril muttered under his breath. "Sometimes I wonder."

"Are you calling me a cyborg too? Mother? Are you going stand there and take this? He's calling your son a cyborg! That's like the ultimate insult!"

"Oh, give me a break." Malory finished her drink and went looking for a refill at the lab counter filled with beakers.

"Lana!" Archer turned to the newly arrived Agent Kane for support. "Back me up here. Cyril just called me a cyborg!"

"No, I didn't!"

Lana ignored them long enough to give Cheryl a good, long look up and down. "Not even a scratch on her. And seriously Archer, just hit him like old times and get over it."

"I would, but Krieger put that chip in my head to stop me intentionally causing harm to other ISIS agents." Archer sighed. "I thought we were friends, Krieger."

"Again, under orders from-"

"I'll have you know," Malory said, mixing together two beakers with questionable contents, "our insurance premiums are down thanks to that chip. Brett hasn't been shot once this quarter."

"Morale's gone up 66%!" Pam chipped in.

"What if there was a mole, Mother? What then? Or, I don't know, a cyborg working for ISIS who could go crazy and kill us all?"

"I have that featured turned off," Krieger assured him.

"Well, good. But it could happen. My point is, even though he's an ass, Cyril's right. Don't go running off to Barry and the KGB. Then you wouldn't work for ISIS anymore and I'd have to come and hunt you down and since Barry's still on the space station..."

"Oh my God, I'm not going to run off to Barry! So not my type. Either of them." Cheryl rolled her eyes. "Besides, those space nerds had their chance to make me their space queen. Now that I'm a robot..."

Krieger held up a hand in protest. "Cyborg."

"Whatever. I can be way more than a space queen." Before anyone had a chance to ask, "ROBO-QUEEN!"

Lana sighed. "Shooooulda seen that one coming. Are we sure this is a good idea?"

"No," came the chorus from the room.

"It's what we have and it's what we're going to go with," Malory said in that voice that made it perfectly clear she wasn't going to be talked out of this one. "All Krieger has to do is get this right-"

"'This' has a name-" Krieger insisted.

"And then, when she challenges Cecil for the fortune and finally puts him behind bars for her attempted murder-"

"Actual murder!" Cheryl yelled. "He is such a loser!"

"-then we can decide what to do from there." Malory grimaced at her new drink, then shrugged. She'd had worse. "Krieger, get it right."

Cyril adjusted his glasses. "What's with you and cyborgs anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Krieger feigned innocence. "I don't like them that way."

"You're always working on new cyborgs, bringing people back from the dead, developing new ways of destroying all that's sacred about humanity..."

Krieger shrugged, readying a smoke bomb exit. "I have many varied interests of which cyborgs are one."

"Krieger has a long history with cyborgs," Malory said. "Since he was a boy."

Krieger sighed, a nostalgic look in his eye. "Oh, Uncle Bob."

"Are we gonna get a story out of this?" Pam asked.

"Yeah, come on, Valmiki," Archer said, "this deserves a flashback." Everyone stared at him in silence. "Valmiki, harbinger-poet of Sanskrit literature and author of the Ramayana, one of the earliest known uses of flashbacks as a literary device? God, read a book."

"Can we come back to this?"

"No, Krieger! Tell us the damned story!"

Krieger sighed again. "Fine. It all started the day my father was eaten by the Dobermans he raised from puppies."

"Wait, isn't this the story where it turns out Ms Archer was there all along and you freaked out and you're actually a Nazi?" Pam was back digging into her burrito, but didn't let it interfere with her ability to join in on the conversation.

"I'm an American citizen!" Krieger shouted in near panic. "And I'm in therapy for the revelation that Ms Archer was coincidentally there the day my father died."

Lana raised an eyebrow. "That's what you're in therapy for? Really? Out of everything, that?"

"It was an emotional time. I have so many feelings." Krieger sounded choked up.

Cyril was confused. "What does this have to do with cyborgs?"

"It has to do with cyborgs," Malory replied, "because I would have been there to support Doctor Krieger in his time of need if it wasn't for meddling cyborgs!"

Archer laughed. "And their dog too."

"Uncle Bob saved me!" Krieger insisted. 

"Wait, Uncle Bob was a cyborg?"

"There was a man in the house after I found my father and the dogs gnawing on his entrails. He tried to get me to go with him, but he smelled like steak and failure and didn't sound Brazilian or German."

"But Uncle Bob did?" Pam asked.

Krieger reenacted the scene while he described it. "I was on the floor and there he was, tall, muscular and intimidating. He shot the other man and then held out his hand and said, with a crystal clear Austrian accent, 'come with me if you want to live.'"

"And you just went with him?" This time it was Cyril's turn to interrupt.

"Did he ever," Malory said. "It took us three years to find him! He was in Guatemala with the disfigured remnants of a cyborg skeleton, trying to piece it back together with duct tape and I don't even know what."

"The main ingredients were semen and Zima," Krieger informed them, then sighed again. He was doing a lot of that today. "Oh, Uncle Bob."

The rest of the room was too busy gagging.

"Ever since then, I've worked towards furthering the development of cyborg technology in hopes of seeing Uncle Bob again some day."

Archer frowned. "Uh, Krieger, what makes you think you can rebuild Uncle Bob?"

Malory huffed and waved a hand at Krieger. "He claims 'Uncle Bob' was from the future and said Krieger was his creator."

"He came back in time to protect me," Krieger helpfully added.

"Again," Lana said, "Ms Archer is the only reason you're in therapy? Really?"

"Oh my God, you guys." Everyone turned to Cheryl, who had been completely forgotten during Krieger's flashback retelling. She was now out of the restraints and had her hands wrapped around her own neck. "I don't feel anything! I'm squeezing with the strength of ten brawny men and I don't even feel a twitch! There's no tingling! No shuddering! Nothing! KRIEGER."

Krieger looked hesitant. "I guess I worked out all of the kinks?" Pam and Cyril groaned. Archer laughed. Malory smothered her face with her hand. Cheryl's eyes glowed in anger. Krieger's eyes darted around the room. "Uh, we can work on that." Cheryl looked like she was about to try her new manly hands on Krieger. He shuffled towards the door. "Smoke bomb!"

Malory sighed as Cheryl charged after him, bypassing the door and crashing through the wall. Cyril looked at her. "Aren't you going do something? Put the place into lockdown?"

She sipped her drink and shrugged. "Eh."

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate titles I giggled at:  
> * I, Tunt  
> * The Tuntinator  
> * Tunt Runner  
> * The Curious Incident of the Cyborg in the Nighttime


End file.
